The anti-piracy government says it has cracked down on illegal streaming of movies and TV, but knowledge suggests it’s booming.
Pair
Published
The anti-piracy government says it has cracked down on illegal movie and TV streaming, but knowledge suggests it’s booming, achieving 215 billion visits to illegal sites last year.
This figure from UK-based MUSO, which claims to have the maximum comprehensive knowledge about website piracy, shows an 18% increase between 2021 and 2022, covering 480,000 videos and TV screens.
“It’s better than ever to get illegal content,” said CEO Andy Chatterley.
The entertainment industry is giving up.
He acknowledges that previous efforts have backfired. Imposing large fines on Americans for downloading some videos made them look like corporate harassers, while court orders to block Internet sites were a huge waste of time.
These days, they’re focusing on the bigwigs: “people who buy supercars with the millions they make on piracy sites,” in the words of Stan McCoy of the Motion Picture Association, which represents Hollywood studios.
It is a key member of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), established in 2017 to coordinate anti-piracy efforts globally. He makes the paintings to track operators and alert police.
In 2023 alone, ACE helped shut down operators in Spain, Brazil, Germany, Vietnam, Egypt and Tunisia, with millions of users a month.
The organization calls for transparent results, measured in criminal sentences for operators and reduced functions for users. ACE says the number of illegal subscriptions has risen from 1443 to 143 in the U. S. The U. S. military is under his watch.
– Made up excuses –
But loose entertainment is easy to find.
It took only a few minutes for an AFP green journalist to Google a list of illegal streaming sites and the most recent episodes of the hit series “Succession” and “White Lotus” without any registration or payment.
Many are not intimidated by repression.
The r/piracy discussion forum on Reddit has 1. 2 million members and each and every justification for its hobby, from the accusation of legal streaming sites to the lack of access in some countries to indistinct anti-capitalist diatribes.
Some are charmingly frank: “I have no excuses. I might pay for everything if I wanted to, but instead of giving my money to the CEO of a media company that makes a thousand times what I do, I’d rather just save the money for my own retirement,” wrote Reddit user ScarecrowJohnny.
One thing dominates right now: the explosion of streaming options, with content now being distributed on valuable subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and many others.
“I paid for one or two, but now there are 50 of those damn things and each and every thing at global prices almost every day, so I hacked again,” Reddit user Jaydra wrote.
The guards are impressed.
“People find an excuse to hack. Before, there wasn’t enough selection, now it’s too much,” McCoy said.
– ‘A lot of progress’ –
Ironically, as the streaming environment becomes fragmented, MUSO’s hacking know-how has become one of the most accurate tactics for media companies to measure which videos and screens are actually popular.
“Piracy is the VOD (video on demand) platform of the world,” Chatterley said.
“There’s no platform bias, there’s no charge bias, there’s no access bias. You see what other people need to see.
“We have consumers who see what’s popular in piracy and then pass it on and buy it for their platform. “
Since getting rid of piracy is unrealistic, perhaps the most important goal for the industry is to make sure it doesn’t become normalized.
“We’ve made great progress in making things less easy,” McCoy said. “If other people decide to break the law, they will. But it deserves to be a marginalized, not common, activity.
With 2,400 employees representing a hundred other nationalities, AFP covers the world as one of the world’s leading news agencies.